


Nightmare

by dorothy_notgale



Category: Smallville
Genre: Based on a True Story, Episode Tag: Asylum, M/M, Mental Illness Fears, One Shot, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-18
Updated: 2013-08-18
Packaged: 2017-12-23 22:25:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/931773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dorothy_notgale/pseuds/dorothy_notgale
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Memory is how we know who we are. When they all say you went "crazy" and you don't know what happened, how can you trust reality? Lex wakes up from a dream one night and makes both a disturbing discovery and a life-changing decision. Set between Asylum and Memoria.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightmare

“No. I— _no_. NnnAGH!” With a sickening drop, Lex finds himself lying on his back. He could swear the bed bounces with the force of his landing. Ridiculous; Clark’s the only one who actually floats while dreaming, although they pretend that doesn’t happen. They pretend a lot of things, these days. The room is dark and quiet, but waking up still leaves Lex with a rabbit’s heartbeat. His feet are tangled in sheets, and … shit. There is an arm clutching his chest and a leg hooked over his waist. Clark is like an octopus in his sleep.

Lex swallows hard and slides to the right; the leg drops to the mattress, but Clark rolls and the arm squeezes tighter, getting entirely too close to Lex’s throat. The space under the covers feels like a furnace and Lex has to get out. He’s suffocating. Abandoning subtlety, he grasps Clark’s thick wrist and lifts it straight up, giving himself space to scoot out from under.

“Mmnh?” The arm lands on the mattress with a soft _whumph_.

“It’s just a dream. Go back to sleep,” Lex hisses. His throat is tacky, verging on sore—probably from having his mouth open during sleep.

Sweat dries on his naked skin as he pads barefoot to the bathroom. When he flips the switch, light stabs into the back of his skull; he squints and takes a half-blind piss. While washing his hands, he avoids looking at the mirror. A glass of tap water soothes his throat but sends a shiver down his spine, left leg, ankle, heel, like cold lightning earthing itself in the stone-tiled floor. He stands there for a moment, head down, palms pressed to the marble countertop, and breathes.

In. Out. Five second inhale, five second exhale. By the time he’s counted to thirty Mississippi, his heart rate is nearly back to normal. The man in the mirror has violet semicircles under his eyes. He’s only visible for a second before Lex plunges himself back into darkness.

Whiskey could get him back to sleep easier, but Clark would disapprove. He keeps a finger on the inside of the glass while holding it under the tap. Blind men do it; Lionel hadn’t. _It’s funny what you remember_.

There is a cork-bottomed granite coaster on his bedside table to prevent moisture rings. Lex’s pinky under the bottom of the glass muffles the clink of impact. He slides beneath the covers and Clark rolls again.

“Okay now?” Awake. Arm snaking around his chest.

“I’m fine. Sorry I woke you.” He wriggles, kicking blankets off his feet to cool them even though he knows he’ll be freezing again in an hour.  
  
“S’okay. Bad dream. You can drive me to school to make up for it.” Clark’s voice is sleepy, content, teasing and inviting Lex in on the joke.

And that pisses him off, a little. Time to play Lord of the Manor.

“Hey, this is my bed, and you’re taking up most of it.” Clark shifts at that, embarrassed by his size for no good Earthly reason. “I have a right to wake you up on my own turf. I have had _one_ nightmare in the entire time we’ve been...” They don’t have a word for what they’ve been, these days.  
  
“Wha?”

“Come on, you know I’ve got excuses for nightmares. I think just one is pretty good, all things considered.”  
  
“What are you talking about? This happens, like, every night.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” Lex twists one pillow into the crook of his arm and positions another to block out the slivers of moonlight that penetrate between the curtains.

“I’m not kidding. You always say it’s just a dream and tell me to go back to sleep.”

“That’s not—don’t joke about that, Clark.”  
  
“I’m not. What? They’re just dreams.”  
  
“You swear that you’re telling the truth?” His pulse beats in the base of his tongue, a mouthful of tension.

“Yes, Lex, I swear. Now will you please just go back to sleep? It’s not a big de-ugh!-eal.” Clark trails off into a yawn.

And isn’t that just a fucking nightmare all on its own? Waking up, night after night, from dreams he can’t recall. Can’t even dredge up memories of the waking moments, all of which must be buried somewhere. Nothing disappears; it just gets covered by the mundane, like shovelfuls of Kansas graveyard dirt.

He’s been going through life oblivious, believing totally in his own nonexistent mental health.

What else doesn’t he remember?

Does Clark even float, or is his diseased mind playing tricks again in his less-lucid moments? He should have thought of it sooner. Madness runs in families; look at Lionel and Lillian. _(God knows Lex has been something out of a Gothic novel all his life, the tragic deformed motherless aristocrat doomed to a life in the attic.)_ He’d been lucky to go as long as he did before landing in Belle Reve, especially when you added in the rate of psychosis among freaks. Forgetting had been the price paid for sanity then. For a veneer of sanity, it seems.

God, what is he forgetting now? What _has he been_ forgetting on a _nightly fucking basis_?

That settles it. Tomorrow morning, he’s calling the Summerholt Institute. He can’t afford to be missing this much.

Not these days.


End file.
